Connelly in Nevada: Hispanic vote may have been key factor

Editor’s note: P-I columnist Joel Connelly is in Nevada observing that state’s Democratic caucuses. The Saturday contest between Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama was close, but Clinton won. Connelly says support from the state’s Hispanic community could’ve been a key factor – and Clinton battled hard for their votes.

LAS VEGAS – The battle for the Hispanic vote has featured surrogates and spearing of opponents.

Hillary Clinton has loaded the stage with Hispanic heroes like United Farmworkers’ Union co-founder Delores Huerta. Curiously, some of the high-powered surrogates have shared her husband’s wandering eye. She has been joined by Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaregosa, escaping a hometown scandal over an extramarital relationship, and onetime Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Henry Cisnernos, whose political career was brought low by accusations of a former mistress.

It has, however, worked. The late lunch crowd at Lindo Michoacan practically chanted Hillary Friday when asked who they would support. It was there that a man shouted at Clinton that his wife was an illegal.

“No woman is illegal,” Clinton shot back.

She made dozens of friends on the spot, even as a trio of odious loudmouths on the airwaves — Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Lou Dobbs — took offense.

The Culinary Workers’ parent union is running Spanish language radio ads, blaming Clinton for a lawsuit that attempted to stop Nevada Democrats from holding caucuses in Las Vegas Strip hotels — where many Hispanics work. And the Culinary Workers are doing an intensive person-to-person canvass trying to keep their members in the Obama camp.

UPDATE
The Associated Press reports that interviews with Democratic caucus-goers indicated that Clinton fashioned her victory by winning about half the votes cast by whites, and two-thirds support from Hispanics, many members of the union that endorsed Obama. He won about 80 percent of the black vote.